Story: An Introduction

I’m feeling a little under the weather today. Somehow, it feels nice. Not in a literal sense but in the way of life reminding you that you are human and to apprieciate the little things that make you happy and feel alive. Like my wife and my little girl, they make me the happiest I’ve ever been. The moment when music seems to articulate your emotions even without words; or just the simple joy of a nice hot breakfast with a good cup of coffee. I’m even thankful for the moments when I am left feeling like I have nothing left to live for. Those are the moments that can define you and really have you searching for who you are, what you believe and who you want to be. I know all that happened for me about four years ago. Well, some of the effects took longer to sink in and to settle.

As I aforementioned, I am going to be writing out my entire cancer story in effort to understand it better and to tell it better. Because I lived it and every detail seemed astronomically important at the time so it’s hard for me to distinguish between the minor and major details to the whole story. So I’m hoping this will help. I’m going to start with something I had to do before I could even begin talking about it with other people: “I had cancer. I am a cancer survivor. I have a huge scar going down the center of my chest and a memory that haunts me everyday.”

Acceptance took me a long time. I kept saying to myself “I don’t want to be defined by something that happend to me.” So I would specifially not mention it to someone until I thought there was a chance we might become close friends, sometimes still don’t. After a while though I realized that no, my circumstances don’t have to define me but they are a part of who I am, and theres nothing I can do to change that. I have to accept it. So instead of trying to hide it from aquantences I treat it as a simple piece of trivia, a damn important one, but nevertheless a simple fact about me that I can’t deny.

As I try to rehash all the details, I hope you can get an feel for the emotion in every scene. Sometimes the emotion didn’t seem to fit the scene but it was life happening in real time, not a movie telling a story about a past event so sometimes there was dissonance. I’m proud to finally feel I can share this story in full, God knows it’s taken me long enough. So keep an eye out for Story: Part 1 and feel free to share and comment as you like.

Jeremy